We're discussing what books we want to read in 2010 while enjoying cookies and each other's company. We'll also have a wrapped used book exchange, so please come with 1 wrapped used book. We did this exchange last year and it was a big hit!

Also please bring books you'd like to swap with other members.

We'll also select what books do we want to read for next year. Please bring in some of your favorite books or a list of your favorite books so they will be up for selection of next year's Wonderland book club reading list!

Our guest presenter is Suzy Barile, who is the author of Undaunted Heart: The True Story of a Southern Belle and a Yankee General.

Here's a little bit about Suzy: After 25-year years in newspapers, Suzy Barile now teaches English and journalism at Wake Tech Community College in Raleigh, N.C. She is a journalism graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, and earned a master's degree in education from NC State. "Undaunted Heart: The True Story of a Southern Belle and a Yankee General" is her first book. She also is co-editor of “The Papers of Richard Caswell [N.C.’s Revolutionary War-era governor], for the N.C. Office of Archives & History.

Here's the synopsis:

When a brigade of General Sherman’s victorious army marched into Chapel Hill the day after Easter 1865, the Civil War had just ended and President Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated. Citizens of the picturesque North Carolina college town had endured years of hardship and sacrifice, and now the Union army was patrolling its streets. One of Sherman’s young generals paid a visit to the stately home of David Swain, president of the University of North Carolina and a former governor of the state, to inform him that the town was now under Union occupation.

Against this unlikely backdrop began a passionate and controversial love story still vivid in town lore. When President Swain’s daughter Ella met the Union general, life for these two young people who had spent the war on opposite sides was forever altered.

General Smith Atkins of Illinois abhorred slavery and greatly admired Abraham Lincoln. Spirited young Ella Swain had been raised in a slave-owning family and had spent the war years gathering supplies to send to Confederate soldiers.

But, as a close friend of the Swains wrote, when Atkins met Ella, the two “‘changed eyes’ at first sight and a wooing followed.” The reaction to this North-South love affair was swift and often unforgiving.